by Alana Melos
“Do whatever you want to me!” she growled at him, fierce and strong. She spat in his face. The cybervamp cranked a hand back to smack her, but Richter held up a hand.
“You remember what I said to you below, liebling, ja?” he said, then looked meaningfully to me. “She does not need to be alive past these next few minutes.”
“But--” Emily said. He cut her off with a look. Though she had power and a side of crazy to go with it, there was no doubting who was in charge here.
“I care not for any other arrangements you’ve made,” he said, his voice turning that puke-inducing silky superior tone he had. He fixed his gaze on Rebekah. “Do you understand? A body is a body to me, whether it contains life… or something else.”
She got the meaning and so did I. With a disgusted look at the cybervamp, and a helpless one for me, Rebekah inclined her head. “I will not try to escape.”
“Good,” he said before turning to Emily. “Make haste! I do not wish to be here when Jorde comes.”
Hearing that name sent a shock through my system, though I’d never heard it before. An unfamiliar wave of rage and fear ran through me, blocking out all rational thought. I stood there frozen, wisps of something unremembered dancing at the edge of my consciousness. It was so close I could almost touch it. Then it vanished, taking the emotion along with it. It left me shaking and sweating. That name was bad. I knew that, even if I didn’t know how I knew it.
In the momentary black out, I’d missed the rest of the conversation. Emily ushered me inside one of the offices, and I let her, still chasing after that bit of memory. When I saw the office, I balked, stopping in the doorway. It had been cleared of most furniture and some kind of magical star had been painted (in black, of course) on the floor. Above the mystical writing in the ceiling was a hook. I’d watched enough horror movies to know what this meant.
I thrust my fists back over my shoulder and had the great satisfaction of hitting her in the face. Something crunched under the force and Emily let out a muffled shriek. On instinct, I turned and pushed past her, only to be caught by that fucking cybervamp. He grabbed my hair as it streamed behind me, pulling me up short. I pulled, throwing my body weight forward, then reversed and leg swept him. That move caught him unawares, and he crashed to the ground. The Siren joined in with me, attacking Richter with her bound hands, raising them up over her head and screaming her fury as she brought them down. Since she’d been ‘subdued’ before, surprise did good by us once more time, and he fell to the ground under the force of her blow.
I grabbed the railing and leaped over it, figuring I’d land on top of a stack of crates and roll, but I stopped as I had forgotten the manacles still leashed to Emily. My arms were yanked back with force equal to what I had put out… Newton’s law and all that. Though neither shoulder dislocated, it still felt as though they were. My side hit the railing as I swung into it and I bounced away, only to crash into it a second time and come to rest.
“Enough!” she snarled, and sent a wave of force towards the Siren, bouncing her back into the warehouse wall. The vamp stood up and made sure Rebekah stayed down while Richter climbed to his feet much more slowly, his face a darkened veil of anger. “I’m tired of this. We’re doing this, and we’re doing this now!”
Without giving me a chance to say anything, she lifted, then hurled me into the room using her magic. I hit the far wall, then the floor. I rolled to my feet over one of my aching shoulders and wobbled there. When I sucked in a breath, I heard a wheeze, then coughed as the wind was knocked from me. Escape wasn’t going to happen and I tensed as I coughed myself back into breathing properly. What was the worst she could do? Steal my soul? Kill me? Make me an undead slave puppet? Turn my head inside out?
Ok, there was a lot she could do and none of it was pleasant. Fuck.
Yet if I continued to struggle, they’d just continue to beat me down. It’d make a bad situation even worse. When she lifted me with her stupid fucking magic to the hook, I let myself be hooked and dangled there, feet just barely off the floor. The implication before was that I wasn’t going to be killed… but how much could I trust their talk? Richter didn’t seem to give a crap one way or another about me. The Nacht Sirene was his prize. Maybe if I kept delaying… Adira should have woken by now, right? She wasn’t dead. I refused to believe that. She’d find Rory. They’d bring reinforcements. She could find me through her vamp bite. Rebekah was missing, Alistair would find her, wouldn’t he? He had to have some hairs or something to cast a locating spell.
I hated the whining edge to my thoughts, mewling like a stupid civilian. Things were bad, they were going to get worse, and hope was just something used to sweeten the kill. If it got that bad, they wouldn’t get any satisfaction from my death. Emily needed me alive for right now, so if I could kill myself first I could at least sour that for her. If I got my hands down, I could rip out my own throat. Could someone swallow their tongue on purpose? I’d never tried… but people had died that way before.
Rebekah was left outside with the vamp guard, but Richter walked in, anger coming off of him in waves. I didn’t need to have my ‘pathy to read that. He sneered at me. “You’ve taught her much I will have to reverse,” he said. “This disobedience… it is so unbecoming.”
“Yadda yadda yadda, let’s get on with it,” I said, rolling my eyes upward to the hook. Maybe if I shifted my weight, I could pry it loose from the ceiling. It was worth a shot. I’d try it when they were distracted with whatever ritual they were going to do.
“Let’s get on with it indeed,” Emily echoed, going to the opposite door. “Just one more thing.” She left, leaving Richter and I in the room alone. Maybe I could piss him off enough to kill me fast? Sometimes, that was the best you could do.
“You know, Rebekah’s not going to be your little tin soldier any more,” I said. “She’ll fight you every step once you don’t have me to hang over her.”
“Oh, she will fall in line,” he replied, though his voice was curt. “The procedure was not completed yet.” His eyes flicked to mine, “And I see she lost part of herself while on her… vacation. That will have to be remedied first.”
The stump, I thought, then shuddered. Having seen his ‘enhanced’ zombie troops, my imagination showed me images of Rebekah with a drill hand, or maybe a gun arm... something both effective and horrifying. Sure, the cybervamp looked nice and sleek, but who knew what was under his clothes? He could have like a huge spike for a dick, or saw blades that popped out of the thighs….
Damn, my mind went to some dark places.
Before I was able to come up with a retort, Emily returned, backing into the room as she levitated something large. When she turned around and floated it to rest in the middle, I gasped. I honest-to-gosh gasped. It was Harry, or, more specifically, Harry’s perfectly preserved body.
“Oh, shit, I’m a psychopath, but you’re crazy as a loon,” I said.
“Get into position,” Richter said, checking his watch again. “This will not take long.”
They moved around the circle. Emily spoke as she moved, her clothing whispering around her like the dead. “This is your fault, Whim,” she said. “If you’d just left him alone, just walked away.”
“He double crossed me, Dahmer junior,” I said. “No one double crosses me and gets away with it.” When she shook her head, I pressed on. “What did you do? Make him a new skin suit out of babies or something?”
At that, she looked up at me with a hurt look, of all things. “I would never hurt a child,” she exclaimed. She turned her gaze back to Harry’s lifeless corpse which, if it weren’t for a certain paleness of his skin and blueness in his lips, he would have looked alive. “It was the nanotech. It kept trying to repair him, even after you skinned him.”
I shuddered with a severe case of the heebie-jeebies. What if his consciousness was still in there? From my exposure to mages, I knew souls existed. I guess I thought of them kind of like the consciousness… and if that was trapped i
n a dead body which kept trying to fix itself….
Well, at least it was nice to know I dealt him a fate worse than death if that was true.
The two mages chanted in Latin. Emily stepped forward, careful not to touch any of the lines of the fingerpainting on the floor, and whipped out a knife. She cut me on the side, a long gash but not too deep, then repeated it on the other side. I hissed with the action, and tried to wiggle away, but she steadied my torso with a hand and continued to make cuts. My thrashing increased, and I kicked at her. Then, she stabbed me in the side, just above one of my kidneys. I grit my teeth and winced as she twisted and pulled it out, staring at me with those dark, dark eyes. I read the message loud and clear: keep moving, and it’ll be worse.
“You could at least save the clothes,” I whispered as blood soaked them and ran down my body. She ignored me.
Burning with anger, I hung there and suffered the shallow cuts the best I could. The stab wound ached and throbbed, but I felt reasonably sure it didn’t hit anything vital. Blood fell and dripped onto the corpse. I looked out the open doorway to see if I could see Rebekah, but neither her or the cybervamp were in view. The chanting stopped and I looked at the two mages, curling my lip up in derision since nothing happened. There wasn’t any magic glow. Harry didn’t get up. All that was for nothing. When I opened my mouth to tell them so, a cold wind blew through the room, taking my words with it. I looked down at my boots, watching my blood drip onto Harry and the floor with the beating of my heart. He twitched.
Emily gasped and clasped her hands together in front of her mouth, her eyes shining with hope. Richter looked bored and checked his watch anew, yet he didn’t take off quite yet. The three of us waited as the corpse twitched again, as if something was trying to jump start it. I supposed that was exactly what they were doing. The blood which had fallen onto him soaked into his skin. The magic glow I’d been missing from earlier erupted from his flesh. Lines of red light raced towards his heart from where the blood had soaked into him. When each line reached its destination, he twitched more, and his body shifted. The color of his skin grew, as if someone turned up the settings on him in a photoshop program. He rolled over so that he faced the ceiling, and then his eyes opened, meeting mine. They were the same faded jeans blue I remembered. I couldn’t see his emotions or thoughts without my telepathy, but I fancied I saw consciousness fill in his eyes bit by bit. Well, drat. Maybe he wasn’t conscious through his ordeal. I’d have to think of another torment worse than death.
“There you go,” Richter said. “And now, I will take my leave.”
“When will I see you again?” Emily asked, her eyes still locked upon the newly revived Harry.
“If all goes well, you won’t,” he stated.
“How will I continue my studies?” she said.
“You’ll find a teacher,” he said, his voice laced with boredom. Huh. It was his fault she was all magicked up now. I’d have to thank him later for powering up an enemy.
She nodded and he left. I heard German outside the door, but it was soft enough I couldn’t quite pick out the words. A flash of movement, and I caught sight of the cybervamp carrying a bruised Rebekah. She must have continued to resist. Our eyes met and I tried to shrug. Maybe I’d get through this. Maybe she’d escape. For now, we each were on our own. Another moment, and she was gone.
Emily crossed into the circle to embrace the dazed and only barely moving Harry. He opened his mouth and a rattle came out. She smoothed his dark blond hair back with a hand, kissed him, and whispered, “Don’t try to talk. Just rest.”
He shook his head back and forth as he glanced up to me, then to her. The puzzlement was positively annoying so I snapped out, “She brought you back from the dead. Could someone cut me down now and bandage me up?” Most of the cuts had stopped bleeding.
“Hang there and bleed,” Emily snarled as she helped Harry to his feet. “Come on, let’s get you dressed and I’ll fill you in on what’s been going on….”
They left me there and, to add insult to injury, she shut off the light switch as they exited to bathe the room in darkness. There was a brief red flash from outside, splashed against the walls and crates I could see from my awkward position, but that was all. I was left alone, probably to die.
Chapter Six
My arms ached from hanging there, but at least I was alone and unsearched. That was a rookie move. If I could get off the hook, I could escape, no problem. After the beating, the bloodletting, and the extended hanging, I was tired and sore. My fingers felt along the hook, and grasped it. I just had to lift myself a couple of inches at the most to get off and drop to the ground. The shaft of the slender metal hook didn’t have much length for me to get a good grip, and the magic manacles were ungainly. I scraped against the ceiling a few times before I figured out that I couldn’t lift myself off the hook--there was simply no room to slide the manacles over it.
Swearing again about how much I hated magic, my next idea was to pull the hook out of the ceiling. I had a pretty lean body with not much fat, but lots of toned muscle. I swung my legs to shift my weight, trying to increase the downward force as much as possible. Though I shook the ceiling, it was securely fastened, maybe welded to a support beam or something. Each swing sent jolts of pain through my shoulders, radiating down my upper back. After a few tries, I had to stop. It hurt too much.
There hadn’t been any furniture in here, save for a couple chairs shoved against a wall. I kept trying to lift myself off the hook when I heard movement not far away and voices. Giving up my attempt at freedom for the moment, I strained to hear, but could only pick out a couple of words here and there. It was Emily and Harry. That much I knew. He must have gotten his voice back.
I heard a door close somewhere, then soft footsteps came my way. The light clicked on, blinding me for a second. I expected Emily, but it was Harry. Now dressed in a button up shirt with half the buttons left undone and grey slacks, he looked… normal. I couldn’t see anything on him which was worse for the wear. He didn’t wear his glasses, but I had the feeling he’d never needed them anyway. His goatee was trimmed, framing a handsome mouth. He’d been thin and wiry before, with a well-defined musculature. He was, you know, good looking in that geek-guy way, which I’m sure he played off to great advantage.
He pressed his lips together as he stared up at the ceiling, then took one of the chairs and scooted it over. He was about my height, around five foot ten, and couldn’t reach the hook from the floor. I stayed still, understanding that he was letting me down for whatever reason. When I was on the ground, I’d knock his ass out then rabbit.
I expected him to lift me maybe, but instead one of his hands glowed bright green. With two fingers, he snapped the hook, causing me to crash to the floor. I rolled with it, intending to jump to my feet right away, but pain lanced through my arms and shoulders. Hanging with them up had been an agony, but one I’d gotten used to. The sudden shift in position and landing on my left shoulder gave me a fresh bout of liquid fire which grew more intense as feeling returned to my hands and wrists. Instead of jumping up and attacking, I laid there wincing, trying not to make a sound of pain. The cuts I’d been given weren’t helping either, nor the shallow stab in my side.
Harry knelt by me. His bright eyes studied me, his face unreadable. Without saying a word, he reached into the pocket of his slacks and brought out a pair of handcuffs. Somehow, through the dark magic manacles, he reached down and snapped the cuffs on me, grabbing an arm and pulling it towards him when I resisted. The gesture sent a new wave of pain through the arm, but at least the shock of pain was on the crest of subsiding, ebbing away.
“Get your fucking hands off of me, dead man,” I snarled.
He snapped the second ring around my wrists and let go to stand up. I moved to kick him since my arms felt useless, but the motion pulled the stab wound on my side. I winced and he stepped over the lackluster attempt. Without another word, he left. This was my opportunity!
My
hands didn’t want to work properly, so I leaned on my forearms as I scrabbled to my feet. I was glad I hadn’t worn any heeled shoes today going for practicality rather than style. One of my feet still slipped a little on the blood I’d left behind, but I made it up. My arms were pins and needles, and my shoulders were on fire, but that wouldn’t stop me. I lurched to the opposite door than the one he left, the blood loss leaving me more light-headed than I thought.
As I reached for the doorframe to steady myself, the blackness around my wrists disappeared leaving only the handcuffs behind. Those I could pick, had I a quiet spot. Yet before I could step out of the room, Harry’s hand fell hard on my shoulder and whirled me around. The motion caused my stomach to seize up, and I thought for a second I was going to puke. Puking two days in a row would be a terrible thing, but if I was going to, I was going to aim for him.
“Sit down,” he said, shoving me back towards the chair. His voice sounded flat. A faint crease in between his eyebrows indicated a frown, but otherwise he looked neutral. As my stomach settled, I sat down in the chair he’d pulled over. My cuts were bleeding again from the activity. The blood seeped into the already wet cloth, making it even stickier.
Harry walked over and knelt by the chair putting down a first aid kit. “You’re going to patch me up?”
“Client wants you alive,” he said with his flat voice. “She’s gone to meet them, but it may take a while… and while unlikely, you might bleed out.”
“Is this the same client you sold me out to, you fucking piece of shit?” I said, intending my voice to be savage. It came out as a harsh whisper. The anger behind his betrayal still simmered, but now was coming rapidly to a boil all over again.
“Yes,” he answered, keeping it simple. He opened the kit, and brought out the needed supplies. Without any preamble, he shoved my shirt up. Since he was helping me out here, I held it up with my clumsy arms, pressing the bloody wadded cloth against my chest as he inspected the cuts.